Knowing that I had a couple of weeks before I would find the time to venture out to the hangar, I made a quick trip out to get a better idea of what I needed to do to get these aft skirts finished. The first thing I did was to pull out all of the failed skirts from previous attempts and put the collection on the work bench for evaluation. My goal was to find the best one to use for a pattern, and I also thought that I could work on some additional bending (over a piece of 4” PVC secured in the vise) to get an idea of what technique I needed to use for the next iteration.
Shortly into the process I took the left skirt from the last attempt and clecoed it in place. As I was working down the sides, I started to notice that it fit pretty well…unlike when I tried it a year or so ago. I stepped back and took a couple of pictures and tried to figure out why it fits now, and didn’t before. The only thing I can think of is that the canopy shape has shifted a bit during construction, and my bending efforts on the PVC actually brought things into line. With that, I have decided that some additional trimming, a little more bending, and duplicating the technique on the right side may serve to bring this to a close. Glad I decided to check!
